Search for roofers in your town and you will see the same names at the top every time. One of them might be a company you know well — a crew no bigger than yours, doing similar work. So why are they above you?
Most roofers answer that question by spending money: more ads, a new website, a marketing package. But the cheaper move comes first — find out exactly why that competitor outranks you. The answer is usually visible, and fixable. Here is how to check, step by step.
Step 1: Search the way a homeowner searches
Start with the searches your customers actually use: “roofers near me”, “roof replacement” plus your town, and “roof repair” plus your town. Use a private browser window, with your location set to your service area, so your own browsing history does not skew the results.
Note who appears in the map pack and who appears in the regular results below it. Is the competitor beating you in the map, in the organic results, or in both? That distinction matters: the map pack is driven mostly by your Google Business Profile, the organic results mostly by your website.
Check more than one search: a competitor might dominate “roof replacement” but be invisible for “storm damage repair”.
Step 2: Compare your Google Business Profile with theirs
Open the competitor’s Google Business Profile and compare it with yours. Check the basics: is their business name, address and phone number complete and consistent? Are their opening hours filled in? Is there a proper business description, or is it blank?
Then look at the parts most roofers neglect: how many photos do they have, and how recent are they? Fresh photos from real jobs make a profile look active and trustworthy. How often do they post updates, and which categories have they chosen?
Reviews are the biggest visible difference: check their review count, average rating and how recent their reviews are. A steady stream of new reviews will usually beat a higher rating with none for months. If their count is far ahead of yours, that is your first job — a simple system for asking happy customers to leave a review. Our guide to local SEO for roofers covers the profile fixes that make the biggest difference.
Step 3: Read their website like a customer would
Now open the competitor’s website and pretend you are a homeowner choosing a roofer. Can you tell in five seconds what they do and where they work? Is there a phone number at the top of every page? Does the site load quickly on your phone?
Look at how their pages are organised. Do they have a separate page for each service — roof replacement, roof repair, storm damage, gutters — or one vague “services” page covering everything? Do they have pages for the towns they serve, or only one page for the whole region? A dedicated page for each service and each town gives Google far more to rank than a five-page site that says everything at once.
Check their content too: do they answer the questions homeowners actually ask — how long a replacement takes, what storm damage looks like, how to spot a leak? If they publish useful answers and you publish nothing, Google has an easy choice.
Step 4: Read their reviews — especially the bad ones
A competitor’s reviews are free market research. Read the five-star reviews first and note the exact words customers use: fast response, clean job site, fair price, explained everything clearly. Those words tell you what homeowners in your area value most.
Then read the one- and two-star reviews: they show you where the competitor is weak — slow callbacks, messy clean-up, warranty arguments — and every weakness is an opening. If homeowners complain that your competitor never answers the phone, answering yours promptly becomes a real advantage — worth mentioning on your website and your profile.
Never copy a competitor’s reviews or write fake ones of your own. The point is to learn what customers care about, not to imitate anyone.
Step 5: Check where else they show up
Search the competitor’s business name on its own. Where else do they appear — local directories, the chamber of commerce, supplier pages, sponsorships, local news? Every mention of their name and address signals to Google that they are a real, established local company.
Compare that list with your own: if they are listed in a dozen local directories and you are in three, closing that gap is straightforward work. If they sponsor a youth team or appear in local news and you do not, that tells you they are building a local reputation, not just a website.
Step 6: Turn what you found into a fix list
After an hour of checking, you will have a short list of reasons — rank them by effort. The quick wins come first: complete your profile, add fresh photos, start asking for reviews, fix your opening hours. The medium jobs come next: one page per service, one page per town, a few useful articles. The slow work — local mentions and a steady review habit — runs in the background while the rest pays off.
You will almost never find a single secret trick. Competitors outrank you because they have done more of the basics, more consistently, for longer. That is good news: the basics are things you can do yourself, one at a time, without a big budget.
The worst response to being outranked is guessing. The best is an honest one-hour check like this one, followed by the three fixes that close the biggest gap — and the next time you search for roofers in your town, you may find the order has changed.
For a wider plan that turns these fixes into steady calls, see our roofing marketing guide.
Get Your Free Google Business Profile Audit — Book a Free Call and see how your profile, local visibility, and website stack up, with a clear plan for what to fix first.